Granby School Garden

Happy Friday from your very 🥵 friends at the Granby School Garden! 🪴

Despite the continued extreme heat and drought conditions, the school garden and its droves of both small and tall helpers watered their little hearts out 💦💦💦 to keep our biodiverse wildlife meadows , garden beds, and native plant seedling areas alive and well! We are all stewards of our environment and these awesome kiddos show how they can make a difference one watering can at a time! 🩷

It has been an incredibly busy week for the garden! The McCord Garden & Nature Club held their first gathering at the Granby Garden! This great group of middle schoolers enjoyed planting native seedlings with garden volunteer extraordinaire , Tim Bischoff! The students will be using their iPhones to catalog all of our native plants into our Granby School Garden i Naturalist account to create a native plant database with our friends at F.L.O.W! 📱🤳🍃🌱🌼🔍

We welcomed all 3 Kinder classes into the garden this week to learn and explore on Friday! We had fun using our senses to smell lemon balm, pineapple mint, chocolate mint, and spearmint! We played in the Pirate digging bed 🏴‍☠️ , the fairy gardens, and watered! 💦

Garden Recess brought in grades 1-5 two times this week and we always have SO much to do and learn together !

A garden is truly a friend that you can visit anytime ☺️🩷🌼.

What a great first week of Garden Recess!

This week we had fun …

🪴making observations
🪴watering
🪴w**ding
🪴harvesting tomatoes
🪴removing old greens to bring to the Wildlife Center
🪴finding treasure in the Pirate bed
🪴looking for caterpillars and eggs
🪴harvesting marigold seeds
🪴harvesting sunflower seeds
🪴playing in the Fairy Garden
🪴tending to the bird feeders
🪴checking the garden bed soil health
🪴turning the compost
🪴learning about herbs and making herb satchet bags
🪴creating beautiful cardboard bouquet vases of native flowers
🪴doing garden chores
🪴making friends
🪴being outside and caring for all of the neat things at the garden
🪴planting fall lettuce
🪴planting radishes
🪴observing a garden snake

Have an awesome weekend! 🐝🐛🦋🍎🥗

Many thanks to Miss Tasha, Miss Anne, Miss Jess, and Miss Sara for stopping by the school garden this week to help out! 🩷

Ms. Swearingens Garden Heroes! 🌟🌟🌟🌟

During the hottest week of the year , these hard working 5th graders came to the garden every morning to water 💦💦💦🥵🥵🥵. All plants, animals and insects who call our school garden “home” were relieved to see these awesome kids!

For all of us who have been with The Granby School Garden since day 1, we have seen how outdoor experiential learning can promote positive transformations in kids lives. We have witnessed first hand how beneficial the school garden has been to students of all ages. Outdoor learning ,as a whole , promotes a love of nature, social emotional intelligence, and naturally encourages kids to care for themselves, for each other, and for the world.🌎

It’s official! Garden Recess is OPEN! 🎉🎉🎉🎉

Grades 1-5 stopped by and had fun doing SO many cool garden and nature activities today!

The kids picked 8 POUNDS of cherry tomatoes 🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅!
It was so fun to talk about all of the different varieties of tomatoes that we are growing this season ☺️! The school cafeteria leaders will be using the tomatoes in the school lunch salads this week 🥗🥗🥗!

We tended to the bird feeders and made interesting observations 👀 of a beautiful caterpillar AND Monarch chrysalis that Miss Karyn brought in ! 🦋🐛

Miss Susan taught the students about Buckeye trees and many garden visitors were lucky enough to bring a Buckeye home in their pocket today🥰!

So much watering 💦… the very stressed plants were SO happy to see the very eager students today !!!

We are so thankful to Ms. Swearingen’s 5th grade students for coming to the garden every morning last week to water 💦 during the extreme heat wave! 🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷
Every helping hand makes a difference ☺️!

Garden “bouquets “ 💐 were made today using some of our blooming native flowers 🩷.

We also welcomed new Garden Recess volunteer, Miss Tasha! We love having any grade level parent or caregiver volunteer with us in the school garden , contact us if you’re interested! 🪴

With SO many grateful hugs and high fives to the families who are taking the time to visit the school garden and 💦💦💦💦💦💦 water , w**d, harvest, and tend … the garden is doing awesome!

The heat is intense and seemingly never ending 🥵🥵🥵🥵🥵 , the plants do become stressed when they are hot and dehydrated. Keep visiting! Keep watering! Together, we can keep the garden thriving through this incredibly dry and hot spell!

Also… HAPPY 1st day of summer!! 🍉😎

Cool things happening right now at the garden …

🥔🥬🥦🧄 🍅

Potatoes, lettuces, broccoli, onions , and cherry tomatoes are starting to become ready for harvesting! The various varieties of cherry tomatoes are spread all throughout the garden beds this year ! We did a lot companion planting this year and it seems to be working out great for everything ! 🙌🏻

The native wildflower meadows are starting to bloom! 🫶🏻🦋🪻🌺🌾🌼🌻 The pollinators are everywhere!! Super exciting!

Many thanks to the Lute family for the donation of bird seed! 🪺🐦 The bird seed and hummingbird food is under the easel in the shed! ☺️

Questions? Want to help? Message Heidi @ 614.783.5939 or [email protected]

Also … if you know a scout group or youth group that would like to take on a special small project for community service and stewardship , The Granby School Garden has a few small areas to spruce up and shine 🌟 ! Let us know if you’d like to help! 🩷

We are a little behind in posting exciting things that have happened over the last busy month since school ended … but , we wanted to highlight these 4 outstanding educators who committed to using the school garden with their students during the Fall, Winter, and Spring of 2023-2024!

The Granby 5th Grade team was awarded the coveted 😉 “Golden Trowel Award” from the Granby School Garden Team for their awesome efforts with the coolest garden project ever… re-wilding our native Ohio wildflower meadows with 37 varieties of native Ohio plants to help increase biodiversity for our pollinators! Month after month , these educators dedicated time with their students to learn about native plants and their impact on our environment. We all worked together with our friends from F.L.O.W. to harvest and process native plant seeds by hand. We labeled the seeds, stored the seeds, and then together, we planted the seeds into milk jug greenhouses and put them out into the garden to cold stratify for the long winter months! In Spring, we transplanted the emerging seedlings to fabric pots so that they could grow stronger and longer roots before being planted into the meadows. Finally, during the very last week of school, the kids planted the native seedlings into the school garden meadows and labeled them , leaving a pretty amazing legacy of environmental stewardship behind as they graduated from elementary school.

Kudos to Mrs. Patt, Miss Kalynova, Mrs. Maze, and Miss Ralston ! Congratulations on your well deserved “Golden Trowels” ☺️🌟🥇

This. When I saw it posted on the others stopped me in my tracks.

This is all true. Gardens are so powerful and so nourishing in hundreds of ways , not just the ones listed below (but these are REALLY good!)

The post says , “You can garden for the food , but more than anything, you could garden just to feel good”. It goes on to say how Science literally backs this up … “We are happiest and healthiest when we have time outside watching plants grow”

🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱

Get out there you guys!

If you don’t have a garden, the gate is always open at Granby School Garden for you and your family to experience the awesome things below. Trust us, we have spent thousands of hours in the school garden and have truly felt ALL of these things!

Sign up to help out or just stop by to soak it all in 🩷☺️🧤

https://www.signupgenius.com/go/20F0944AFAB29A5F49-summer

Be sure to sign up to come and play in the garden this summer! 🩷

Summer Watering and Harvesting During April and May 2023, all Granby students were welcome to stop by the garden to plant a new season of fruits, vegetables, herbs, and flowers in our awesome school garden! We are thrilled to invite you and your kiddos to water and harvest the garden this summer! This is a great opportunity for y...

This made us laugh today… Miss Heidi’s “Garden Mobile” was chocked FULL of plants from dear friend of the Granby Garden, Miss Jennie Hayes! Miss Jennie is our resident Master Gardener and somehow knows ALL of secret spots in town to get donated plants . Miss Jennie dropped off dozens of beautiful herbs and huge tomato plants for our school garden to Miss Heidi’s last night. Our garden simply can’t afford to buy dozens of plants so this was like Christmas for us! 🥺🩷🌱

Jennie, you are a super hero.🦸🏻‍♀️ 🌟! We certainly have a team of “Garden Avengers” who often swoop in and save our day and our garden from just about everything! Thank you SO much!

…and then there were 2! Just 2 days left of school for these awesome kids! Today, we had 2nd to 5th grade come out for their very last “ Garden Recess” time with Miss Susan, Miss Karyn, Miss Alli and Miss Heidi. ☺️

Together, we soaked 💦the growing garden beds with water and love , we planted beautiful herbs and tomato plants🍅 , eggplant🍆, and Sunflowers! 🌻!

Miss Karyn made some AMAZING garden vinaigrette for our bountiful salad greens🥬 . Many of your students LOVED it. Here is the recipe:

1/4 cup vinegar (red or cider or whatever you have), 1 Tbsp olive oil, salt, pepper, fresh chopped herbs (parsley, thyme, chives, dill, basil, etc). Mix together and serve.

We love to show the kids all of the cool things that you can do with herbs from the garden! 🥗

Don’t forget to sign up for Summer Watering and Harvesting on our sign up genius! Look for the link here, in Mrs. Schlaegel’s newsletter, on the Granby Families page, and in the PTA newsletter! We need your help to keep things growing and healthy! 🩷

Have a fun summer! 🍉💦☺️

School Gardens are AMAZING 🌱🩷🥗🎉

You guys… I can’t keep up with all of the daily amazing things that happen at this school garden each day!!!

This week, our amazing 5th graders and their fearless and innovative teachers culminated our school year long Native plant legacy project (partnering with our friends at FLOW 🩷) by placing the 37 Native Ohio seedlings into the Granby School Garden wildflower meadows! Our goal was to “re-wild” the meadows with a more diverse selection of native Ohio plants … leaving a legacy of a more biodiverse ecological system for our pollinators , and for the environment! These awesome students hand-harvested the seeds from dried native plants graciously donated by Tim Bischoff and Sawmill Wetlands. The kids hand-processed the seeds through seed screens and labeled them, in teams! Teams of students planted the seeds into milk jug greenhouses and placed them outdoors in the garden for cold-stratification during the long winter months ! In April, the students transplanted the seedlings into fabric bags in order to strengthen the root systems before putting the seedlings into the ground. On Wednesday, the kids , Mr. Tim, the garden volunteers and the 5th grade teachers planted the beautiful natives into the meadows!

Success!!!!!!!!!! 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

What a COOL project! 🤩

These kids are making a difference. Climate change, global warming, erosion, biodiversity…we could go on and on. Native plants are where it’s at and these young students now understand how important they are to our gardens, our yards, our community, and to our environment! ☺️

Also awesome… a Kindergarten class came out on Friday morning to enjoy the school garden together! Our awesome 5th grade garden ambassadors came out as well and were great big buddies to the kinders! We can remember when these “big kids” were just learning their way around the school garden. Full circle moments like this make our hearts full! 🩷

This week we were super excited to have our Granby Garden picnic raffle winner and her 3 friends at the garden! We always close the school garden to all grades but it is open just for our garden picnic winners! For our special picnic this year, we taught the kids how to make “garden lemonade” by enhancing lemonade with fresh herbs from the garden! The girls LOVED it! Also, we had fun making citronella patio votives with the girls. We showed the group how they can use herbs and citrus to naturally repel insects! We are ALL about non toxic methods to keep away pests and insects that might be bothersome. 🩷 The girls picked mint, lemon balm , and rosemary , added a slice of lemon and placed it all in a small jar . We showed them how to add water and then place a citronella tea light on top !

Love this helpful poster! 🩷

The school garden is always SO busy! These beautiful days have us doing ALL of the things! Planting, w**ding, watering, tending, etc!

Friend of the garden, Mr. Tim, brought us more sturdy seedlings from his home greenhouse for us to plant in our raised garden beds! The garden recess kids enjoyed putting various herbs and veggies into their happy homes in our garden beds last week!

This garden season, we are doing “companion planting” in many of the raised beds! We are teaching the students about plants that enjoy being planted next to other plants, and sometimes, the plants can even protect one another from pests and insects and can also be a “boost” to one another ! The kids love to learn about these fun methods as much as we love teaching about them! Today, we planted Marigolds, “garden bodyguards” as the kids like to say , around the edges of the beds. The kids also love how the potted mint and strawberries “protect” and “guard” their beautiful salad greens in the salad bed! 🥗

5th graders have been SO awesome with prepping our wildflower meadows for the new native seedlings that they have grown from seed ! Weeding, pulling up grasses , raking , zoo brew-ing … it all takes time and muscle! We have loved working so closely with the 5th graders and their teachers , Tim Bischoff, and our friends at F.L.O.W this school year on the “re-wilding” project of our wildflower meadows!

So much collaboration, communication, teamwork, and love go into all of the daily activities that go on in the school garden! 🩷

Kids who are educated about bees 🐝 and insects are often the calmest when a bee or an insect approaches them! This young lady was actually laughing and enjoying her new pollinator pal “Bubbles” (she named it! 🩷) as she observed the bumblebee trying to pollinate the flower on her dress! She wasn’t afraid. She stayed still. She told us that her grandma (our very own garden educator and volunteer Miss Susan) taught her all about bees and pollinators. ☺️

A few more fun photos from the last few days at the school garden ! 🐰🐞🐝

Miss Karyn took this wonderful photo of ladybugs hard at work nibbling up the aphids! 🐞🩷

Our baby bunnies who lived under the oregano decided to come out and explore last weekend on their own …we showed them the little door out and away from the salad greens 🥗☺️🐰.

Here is a neat example of carpenter bees 🐝 at work in the garden making small holes in our sign posts 🙃.

What are you seeing 👀 in your garden spaces this Spring? 🦋🌷🍄

So much “growing on” at the Granby School Garden ! 🌱🥗🩷

Happy Wednesday! 🩷

It was a chilly day at the school garden , but we still found ways to have fun and engage with the environment! 🌎

I think we made a total of 180 sunflower seed 🌻 necklaces with the children who came to visit the school garden this week! The kids are so excited to see their little seeds sprout before their eyes in just a few days at home! Most of the kids named their seeds today … “Phillipe” , “Sunny”, “Flaky”, “Aliyah” …and we can’t wait to hear how the seedlings do when the kids place them into soil at home !

Happy Earth Day from your friends at the Granby School Garden! 🌎 Each day in the school garden is an opportunity for children to make this beautiful Earth of ours a better and healthier place! 🌎🩷🌎🩷🌎